


why were you digging (what did you bury) before those hands pulled me from the earth?

by kluxbusters



Series: who ya gonna call? [1]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Mentions of Nightmares, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining, Post-Trade, Unrequited Love, ghost hunters au, i can't tag some stuff cause spoilers, i wrote this instead of working on my college essay, mentions of nail yakupov, spooky season lads, this might be confusing i'm sorry, this starts funny but is actually kinda sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-20 20:48:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21062960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kluxbusters/pseuds/kluxbusters
Summary: “I told you, EJ, one demon per season,” Sam insists, one hand running through his wild curls.“And this isn’t technically a demon,” EJ says, handing over the case file. “You can read through it and everything. The demon bit is just a theory.”Sam takes the case file and walks towards the recording room, muttering about ghosts and demons.“Sam!” Gabe hears Z call after him. “We talk about demon house now?”Gabe hears a loud scream, then Z’s laughter echoing throughout the hallways. He turns to see EJ laughing, his eyes on where Sam turned the corner of the hallway.aka: ghost hunters au





	why were you digging (what did you bury) before those hands pulled me from the earth?

**Author's Note:**

> As always, if you found this work by googling yourself or someone you know, congrats! Welcome to AO3! Please, click off this piece and go root for the Washington Nationals! go Nats!  
This, is obviously, a work of fiction, and not a reflection on the people in this story.
> 
> please don't read my works on your public podcast or repost them onto a public site. 
> 
> hello again everyone, welcome to my first Spooky Season story!  
special thanks to tj (love you buddy) for listening to me talk this through, and special thanks to lily for inspiring me!  
i also drew some inspiration from maggie stiefvater (mainly raven king and how she uses non-linear time in that book)  
this story was fueled by skittles, coffee, and lots and lots of abba.

There's 5 people in a living room, somewhere just outside of Denver. Beer bottles on the floor, rug stained with alcohol and blood. Gabe is walking, not out of choice, but out of necessity. But that’s not where this story starts.

Maybe it starts here, with a new case. 

“I told you, EJ, one demon per season,” Sam insists, one hand running through his wild curls.

“And this isn’t  _ technically _ a demon,” EJ says, handing over the case file. “You can read through it and everything. The demon bit is just a theory.”

Sam takes the case file and walks towards the recording room, muttering about ghosts and demons.

“Sam!” Gabe hears Z call after him. “We talk about demon house now?”

Gabe hears a loud scream, then Z’s laughter echoing throughout the hallways. He turns to see EJ laughing, his eyes on where Sam turned the corner of the hallway.

The case EJ gave Sam to look at sounds like one of their typical ones—a real estate agent out in the country wants them to check out a house she’s trying to sell. There’s the typical reports of inexplicable footsteps, unfamiliar voices, but Gabe thinks the description of the house was what made EJ say yes.

“It’s like—the house changes you,” The real estate agent had explained. “The house doesn’t like strangers.”

“What do you mean?” EJ had asked.

“It makes you the way it want you,” The real estate agent said, a note of desperation in her voice. “It changed my wife, please, I don’t know who else to call—“

“Woah, woah,” EJ said in the same voice he uses to calm down his horses. “We’ll handle it, alright? Just email me the address and we’ll be there by Thursday.”

Gabe had wanted to chime in, but the real estate agent hung up before he could.

Needless to say, it made for a great audio clip, but it also intrigued the two of them. EJ swore up and down it was possession, but Gabe quietly believed it was something more sinister.

Maybe the story begins here, with Gabe and EJ in a kitchen.

EJ has his injured foot securely in its plastic boot, but he doesn’t stop Gabe from pulling him to his feet as YMCA starts playing. They stumble around the kitchen together, Gabe singing into EJ’s ear.

“Gabe, Gabe,” EJ laughs, mouth against Gabe’s neck.

“What?” Gabe replies, twirling them around.

“You can’t sing for shit,” EJ whispers.

“I know,” Gabe hums, then launches into the chorus.

EJ cuts him off halfway through the second verse with a kiss. Gabe doesn’t mind. He especially doesn’t mind when EJ backs him into a wall and then drops to his knees ten minutes later.

Maybe it starts here, driving into Buttfuck Nowhere, Colorado, just as the leaves began to turn. At least it was a decent drive, Gabe thought to himself, the trees turning orange and yellow in the autumn.

“Did you hear about that case out in Edmonton?” Tyson asks, voice crackling through the car speakers.

“Why do you think I pay attention to Canadian shit?” EJ replies, glancing in his rearview mirror.

“Because your boyfriend’s Canadian,” Tyson says.

“Sam’s not my boyfriend.”

“But you knew who i was talking about,” Tyson teases. Gabe chuckles a little at EJ’s offended expression.

“So Edmonton?” EJ asks, trying to save what little pride he has left.

luckily, Tyson takes the bait and launches into his explanation, which EJ makes faces for half of. Gabe struggles not to laugh, knowing Tyson's love for anything regarding... well, love.

“So then everyone thinks Connor’s like. Beyond saving, because he’s basically been  _ possessed _ forever. But somehow Dylan saves him, through the power of like, true love or whatever, and then—“

“Are you seriously telling the McDavid story again?” Alexander interrupts.

“It’s a good story, Kerf, shut up,” Tyson replies.

“Is that Kerf?” EJ asks, and Tyson hands the phone off.

EJ and Kerf spend a while on the phone, Tyson interjecting about jobs they’ve worked and the stuff they like about Toronto so far. 

Kerf is rambling about a tea shop he found in Yorkville when EJ’s phone rings again and he looks to see Sam’s contact photo up on his screen.

“Sorry guys, I gotta take this,” EJ apologizes, then answers Sam’s call.

Sam tells them where he had booked rooms, and EJ loudly proclaimed how grateful he was that they weren’t staying at another shitty motel. Gabe can see what Tyson meant now, about EJ and Sam being involved. It makes his stomach twist in an unfamiliar way, in a way he doesn’t like. 

When they pull into the parking lot of the hotel, purple’s just starting to appear alongside the blue in the sky. EJ swipes his room pass and drops his suitcase in the closet. It’s a modest room, two beds, a small bathroom with the lights on and door closed, and a tiny desk. Gabe peers inside but doesn’t come in. He can imagine what happens inside, though. 

“Oh god yes,” EJ would exclaim, flopping down onto one of the beds.

“You like the room?” Sam would say, walking out of the bathroom, a towel draped low around his hips.

“I like it more now,” EJ would leer, tugging at the edge of Sam’s towel.

“EJ,” Sam would say in a soft voice, the one he talks in late at night, when no one but EJ’s around to hear it.

“Sammy,” EJ would reply, equally soft, and tug at Sam’s towel again.

Sam would follow the tug down, down, down, onto EJ, and press the long line of his body to his.

Gabe doesn’t talk to EJ about this feeling, about the way he’s been feeling for months, about the nausea that rises in his stomach every time he sees Sam return EJ’s smile. EJ must know, he reasons, but is being kind enough to not say anything.

But, maybe it’s not about where the story starts. Maybe it’s about where it ends.

Let’s try this ending: “Young man?” Sam says, but there’s something wrong with his voice. “Are you listening to me?”

“Sammy?” EJ asks.

“Young man? What do you want to be?” Sam interrupts.

“Sammy? Is that—is that the YMCA?” EJ says, laughing a little.

“I said, young man,” Sam continues, his voice getting louder. ej’s not laughing anymore.

“Sam. Sam, stop. This isn’t funny.”

“You can make your dreams come true,” Sam says, dropping the EMF detector down, down, down. the lights flicker, once, twice, three times, and then stabilize. Then all the lights in the house go out. 

“Sammy, baby,” EJ says, pleading.

“No man, does it all by himself,” Sam says, taking EJ’s hands. EJ can feel himself pull backwards instinctively, but Sam’s grip is deceivingly strong. “Don’t you want help, Erik?” Sam asks, finally looking into EJ’s eyes.

“You never call me Erik,” EJ laughs nervously, looking around the darkened room.

“Do you?”

“Do i what?”

“Want help.”

“Not from whatever you are,” EJ says firmly.

“Why not?” Sam-not-Sam says, sinking to his knees.

Gabe can’t say anything. 

“Because I like Sammy, not you.”

“You like... him?” The thing asks, tilting sammy’s head.

“I love him,” EJ whispers.

Gabe’s heart breaks.

Maybe the story starts here, when Z asks “You think something wrong with him?”

“With who?” EJ says, fiddling with one of the mics.

“G,” Z replies. “He’s been acting a little weird, yes?”

“I dunno,” EJ says. “That might just be Sam.”

“Sam’s always a little strange,” Gabe adds, quietly.

“EJ!” Sam calls from down the hallway, and EJ stumbles to his feet. “I brought coffee back!”

“Thank fuck,” EJ groans.

With the magic of Dunkin Donuts coffee, they manage to set up the equipment and get back to the hotel by seven. 

Z begs out of movie night, saying he wants to call Aleks and their daughter. Gabe leaves a little later, leaving Sam and EJ on the two beds, sitting opposite each other.

Gabe lets himself fall back into the fantasy, into the images of bare skin and blonde hair and dark curls and arms wrapping around each other, of legs pistoning and sweat glistening. 

He doesn’t sleep that night.

Gabe’s thoughts start to wander around 3 AM, and he stops thinking of EJ and Sam. Instead, he thinks of burnt houses, crosses, and his family. He hears the way YMCA sounds over melted speakers, the howls of Swedish wolves in the mountains. He sees golf carts and empty smiles, and a bloodied head that looks like his. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he wakes up cold and alone, longing for EJ’s arms.

Because here’s the thing. He and EJ used to fuck around, before work got serious. He thought that they really had something, but one day EJ just. Stopped being his, started coming to work with red-rimmed eyes and a hole in his heart where Gabe used to be.

Here’s how this story goes, in case you were wondering. Boy likes boy. Boys date. Boys stop dating. Boy starts dating someone else. Gabe is alone.

Maybe the story ends here, in a living room somewhere just outside of Denver. Maybe it ends with this, with beer bottles thrown on the floor, picture frames falling off the wall, a mini cyclone ripping its way through EJ’s house. Maybe it ends with Gabe barefoot on the same floor he fell in love with EJ on. Maybe it ends with Sam, or whatever possessed Sam, wreaking havoc on the man Gabe used to love. 

“Sam!” Gabe says, much softer than the situation requires.

Sam-not-Sam turns anyways, storm raging behind his eyes,

“Gabe?’ He asks and it’s just Sam this time, eyebrows scrunched in confusion. “How are you… here?”

“Made it just in time, huh?” Gabe laughs.

“Gabe?” EJ asks, staring at Sam.

“Why can’t he see you anymore?” Sam asks softly.

“We’re not the same anymore,” Gabe says.

“Am I…” Sam starts.

“No,” Gabe assures him. “But… I am, right?”

“Yes,” Sam says sadly. “For a while now.”

“I think I’m starting to get it,” Gabe smiles.

“Is it you, the one… the one inside me?”

“No. But I might be able to help with that.”

“Would you?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Gabe asks, quirking his head.

“We’re kind of in love with the same person, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“It’s okay that he loves you,” Gabe says. “You don’t have to feel guilty anymore. He doesn’t need to feel guilty either. Tell him I said that.”

“I will,” Sam says, eyes glistening with tears.

“Okay,” Gabe says.

“Okay,” Sam replies.

This is how it ends.

Gabe walks over to EJ, feet light on the floorboards. He brushes a kiss across EJ’s cheek, feels EJ turn towards him, but keeps walking. He walks past EJ and stops next to Sam. He can see Nail, floating just out of reach, and he grabs Nail by the hand and keeps walking. His feet hit louder and louder on the floorboards until it’s all he hears. He keeps walking.

Maybe it starts here, with Gabe walking. Maybe this is where it ends too.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm very sorry for this story, but it came to me during the avs at pens game and i couldn't let it go. i might add a sequel/prequel with ej's perspective, and make this a series! i think there's some things to be added/clarified, so hopefully i'll get around to writing that soon.  
i had a lot of fun writing this, and i hope you had fun reading it.


End file.
